Tag Archives: The Twilight Zone

There is some thought that we are in the midst of a civil war in America. If we are, it’s not like the first one that occurred over a century and a half ago.

In 1861 there was a clear geographical demarcation in the War Between the States: the northern states were on one side and the southern states were on the other. There were some border states with mixed loyalties that officially stayed in the Union.

The nature of the war is different now. The conflict is between masses of individuals spread throughout the country in blue {“liberal”) states and red “”conservative”” ones. A few are purple, meaning they could go either way during an election.

I suppose there COULD be a geographical split, but I doubt any states that secede would join a confederation. These states most likely would blue ones located on different coasts.

There are some similarities between the 19th century contest and our own. Both wars concerned political, ideological and cultural differences. But the mixing of those who hold disparate views is so great now that it would be virtually impossible to have organized hostilities involving armies.

What is very different today is the spiritual nature of the struggle. Back in the 1860s Americans generally accepted that Christianity was the prevailing faith. Both folks in the north and their counterparts in the south accepted that our country was “Christian”.

This didn’t mean that everyone was a believer. It just meant that our national values leaned heavily on Biblical teaching and many Americans sought to live their lives by them. It was also generally agreed that violating Christian instruction regarding social mores was anathema.

This way of thinking is obviously not the case in the second decade of the 21st century. The Christian faith is still prevalent, but not as much as in the past. Furthermore, since the 1960s the nation has descended into what can best be termed a post-Christian era. In fact, we are probably way beyond such a period.

The end result is that every man does what is right in his own eyes. This could very well mean that Americans wittingly or unwittingly are making a deal with the polar opposite of Jesus, i.e. the evil being known as Satan, or the devil.

Oh, the accord with the angel of darkness may not be cut in stone in the human’s mind, but it is still an understanding. This compromise is similar in kind to my sports rooting.

Since none of my team’s win, I generally cheer from the negative. I pull for my teams’ rivals to lose.

Some unbelievers behave in the same fashion. They see Christianity as a losing proposition for them. They may not be that enthused about or even believe in the devil, but they get involved with his dark devices anyway by default. The resulting values and actions are not exactly “Christian” in tone.

Other people who are not followers of Jesus are in a worse fix. They have fallen hook, line and sinker into the abyss with Satan. They are making a clear and conscious choice to ignore and disobey God and walk with the devil.

This predicament can be detected in the America of today by observing the onslaught of lying in the media.Politicians and other leaders lie to our faces on TV, radio and the Internet. In addition, the purveyors of news are not only willing accomplices, but avid participants in the deception.

The source of this systemic falsehood is made known in the Scriptures. Satan has many names, but one of his monikers in the Bible is “The Father of Lies.” He’s the king prevaricator.

Such a decline as we see now was perhaps possible in the 19th century, but not probable. Americans still had not thrown caution to the wind. Truth still mattered. Evil was at bay.

CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS FROM NORTH AND SOUTH AT A REUNION. A COMMON SET OF SPIRITUAL VALUES MADE RECONCILIATION POSSIBLE.

Because of our current beguiling, I was amazed to see the Christian faith of the time depicted on my television last night. Unfortunately, the show was one made almost 60 years ago, not recently.

One of my favorite Netflix pastimes is to watch old episodes of the science fiction/fantasy series “The Twilight Zone.” The one I saw last night involved a Confederate soldier who stumbles upon a bizarre scene in a Virginia town.

This Rebel scout found Union frozen in place in the streets of the place. They appeared as if they were people in a still photo, some in the middle of an action.

The Confederate, a man named Sergeant Paradine, at first thought the men were asleep. But he soon tossed that idea. He couldn’t wake them up, even though he shouted in their faces.

As he walked Paradine came upon an old man named Teague who claimed to have cast a spell on the Union soldiers. He showed the Confederate his book of witchcraft.

When Paradine didn’t believe him,the warlock froze him in place, too. However, the sorcerer left him with the ability to comprehend what was happening around him.

After releasing Paradine from the effects of the incantation, the old man told the sergeant that he could cast a spell on the entire Union army, but he wouldn’t because he knew he was to die that day. He gave the book to Paradine so the Confederate could do so himself.

Before reporting back to his commanding officer, Paradine froze some Union defenders in place on a ridge in the region. The state of these soldiers was confirmed by the attacking Confederate officer when the rebels were all together that night.

PARADINE

What ensued was a debate over whether or not Paradine should go on and paralyze the entire US Army. He hesitated at first because while he was with Teague the sergeant felt the use of the book was unclean. The warlock also confirmed that the person conducting the witchcraft was in league with the devil. All this made Paradine uneasy.

At first Paradine’s commanding officer resisted the casting of spells, also. “It’s of the devil,” he said.

But Paradine regrouped and tried to convince his superior to let him use the book of witchcraft. “I don’t know much about Satan, he said, “but this cause of ours is dying right in front of our eyes.”

The officer then concurred and told Paradine to read from the book. However, when he did so he came across a passage that made him stop dead in his tracks.

“He calls upon us to revoke the name of God,” said Paradine. Despite exhortations from the others the sergeant couldn’t go on.

“What do we call em? Damn Yankees, don’t we, lieutenant?,” said Paradine. “If I read aloud from the book it is the Confederacy that will be damned.

“It’s the book or it’s the end,” he went on. “Then let it be the end. If it must come, let it come.

“If this cause is to be buried let it be put in hallowed ground. Let it be put in hallowed ground.”

The book of witchcraft was immediately burned in the campfire.

Would that men and women in America take the same stance against Satan instead of colaboring with him. The only way that will happen if we see the error of our ways as Paradine did. If we do, then perhaps we will have a spiritual revival in our nation.

Even if a large segment of our populace continues to make a deal with the devil, the people of God can still take a stand. They can actively oppose Satan’s playbook. This courageous activity may not save our country, but such a stance will at least please God and make our burial ground noble in His eyes.

In the long run of eternity, this is more important. Siding with Satan is never right.

“Twilight Zone” host Rod Serling would open his show with the following:

You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s a signpost up ahead. Your next stop: the Twilight Zone.

As I recently wrote, all the signs currently point to the world entering the Twilight Zone. What I mean is that it is really difficult to determine whether a lot of people are living in reality or fiction.

For example, when I turn on my computer and choose to watch the news instead of entertain myself with science fiction, I see protesters explaining to a reporter why they are out in the street. What comes out of their mouths are best termed conspiracy theories, devoid of logic and truth.

The media aids and abets this warped thinking with its twisted reports. Their reports are seductive, for they pose as news.

Further, news organizations are in charge of what we see and hear on our devices. We may not be getting the most important news.

To be fair to the mob, we are full of false beliefs and memories. As I was writing this an article popped up in my Twitter feed from the Wall Street Journal which discusses research about individual self awareness.

“Most of us are not as self aware as we think we are,” writes author Elizabeth Bernstein.

Reporting on the research of psychologist Tasha Eurich, Bernstein notes:

When it comes to self-knowledge, she says there are three types of people: those who have it, those who underestimate how much they have (she calls them “underraters”) and those who overestimate how much they have (“overraters”). Underraters beat themselves up unnecessarily. Overraters believe they do everything well.

Some of us think that we have wonderful memories, also. I personally think mine is flawed, but I do have a close childhood friend who I believe has an exquisite ability to fill in the blanks for me on my lost memories. However, he may not be as astute as I think he is.

In a 2013 piece, The Atlantic asked “How Many of Your Memories are Fake?” Erica Hayasaki reported that even people with something called Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory sometimes have their remembrances wrong.

One of the reasons for these mistakes in memory is that that our minds are subject to manipulation.

Simone Weil, one of the great philosophers of the first half of the 20th century, wrote that imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life. Unfortunately, she herself was evidence of this.

During World War II Weil contracted tuberculosis while in England. She was there hoping to be sent to France to work for the Resistance. As a show of support for the French, she only ate what she “believed” the French person under German occupation would feed on. She died.

The coroner’s report said: “the deceased did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed”.

Despite this sad end, Simone Weil is credited with seeking for truth during her short life.

A great student and thinker, she had a higher degree in philosophy. Weil also studied several religions. In 1935 she was drawn to the Christian faith. She wrote in her “Spiritual Autobiography” that her concept of life was Christian.

In the same work, Weil described Jesus as the truth. She also had a high regard for the Bible. Weil wrote:

Christ made promises to the Church, but none of these promises has the force of the expression “Thy Father who seeth in secret.” The word of God is the secret word. He who has not heard this word, even if he adheres to all the dogmas taught by the Church, has no contact with truth.

Weil chose to live out her faith outside of the traditional church. She believed that Christianity was “catholic (i.e., universal) by right but not in fact.”

“So many things are outside it, so many things that I love and do not want to give up, so many things that God loves, otherwise they would not be in existence,” she wrote.

Weil was not only an intellectual and devoted person of faith, but she was also politically active. Like a lot of young people, she was a political leftist. At the age of 10 she decided she was a Bolshevik.

Weil supported Communist movements in Europe. She wrote articles debating both capitalism and socialism. Although she was a terrible soldier, Weil tried to fight for the republicans during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.

If she were alive today, Weil would grasp the attraction of modern groups such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter to today’s youth. She chose to try to reach the revolutionaries of her day and with truth outside of the Church.

Social enthusiasms have such power today, they raise people so effectively to the supreme degree of heroism in suffering and death, that I think it is as well that a few sheep should remain outside the fold in order to bear witness that the love of Christ is essentially something different.

Would that our latter day young social justice warriors, so full of a desire to change the world, add the zeal for truth possessed by Simone Weil to their repertoire. They could do it if they wished.

Weil wrote:

After months of inward darkness, I suddenly had the everlasting conviction that any human being, even though practically devoid of natural faculties, can penetrate to the kingdom of truth reserved for genius, if only he longs for truth and perpetually concentrates all his attention upon its attainment.

I can only hope and pray for this kind of effort toward intellectual honesty today. It is severely lacking.

In “22”, an episode of the old TV series “Twilight Zone”, Liz Powell is having a recurring nightmare, except to her, it is all too real.

The events are the same every time. It begins with Liz lying in a bed in a hospital. She is there due to nervous exhaustion.

In the dream Liz awakes to the ticking of a clock. She reaches for a water glass and knocks it onto the floor, where it shatters.

Liz hears receding footsteps and follows them out into a hallway. She catches a glimpse of a nurse getting on an elevator. Liz watches as the elevator indicator lights reveal that it has reached the hospital basement.

Liz takes the elevator to the basement and sees Room 22. It is home to the hospital morgue.

A smiling, smug-looking young nurse walks out and says,”Room for one more, honey.” The screaming Liz scampers down the hall toward the elevator.

Despite the assurances of the hospital psychiatrist, Liz believes her experience is not a dream. She insists that it is genuine.

In his imitable way, “Twilight Zone” host Rod Serling tells after the initial showing of Liz’s dream: “At this moment we have just finished walking with her in a nightmare.

In a moment she’ll wake up and we’ll remain at her side. The problem here is that both Miss Powell and you will reach a point where it might be difficult to decide which is reality and which is nightmare. A problem uncommon perhaps but rather peculiar to the Twilight Zone.”

The “Twilight Zone” aired in the early 1960s. Five and a half decades ago, the depictions of horrific ambiguity were clearly fictional.

Viewers at the time watched the show to be entertained, knowing that afterwards they would return back to a world of truth and clarity.

The problem in the first quarter of the 21st century is that we have reached a point where it IS difficult to decide like Liz Powell whether we are living in reality or a nightmare. We ARE living in the Twilight Zone.

We all know about fake news. There is propaganda everywhere.

But sometimes the news gives us absurdity that is unbelievably factual. This week, for example, ESPN took an Asian American announcer by the name of Robert Lee off a University of Virginia football game because his name could trigger the weak.

This poor man had a moniker that was identical (sans middle initial) to that of the Confederate general whose statue created the controversy which resulted in riots on the UVA campus. Antifa leftists clashed with white supremacists over the validity of honoring a man who fought to keep slavery.

Robert E. Lee was a hero in Virginia at the time I was a child there. No more.

Part of the reason this is so is because today’s young person lacks knowledge. They either are being given a warped view of history in the classroom or they have chosen to see only one side of a man people of my youth thought of as a noble person.

It is easy to get suckered into false beliefs. I am exhibit 1 for this statement.

I was in my mid-thirties when I earned a graduate degree and changed careers. My father came to my graduation.

During a party in my home I showed him a brochure of the school where I planned to work. It was a start-up language program at a small college.

My father got one look at the name of the school, which identified it as one which had a Christian focus, and he quickly issued this judgement.

“You’ve never had a steady job your whole life and now you want to go work for this Christian group.”

I was shocked and offended. Never mind that the event was supposed to be celebratory. For crying out loud (a phrase I have inherited from Dad), I had just received a Master’s degree.

For probably the first time in my life I contested what Dad had said to me. I argued that before coming to grad school I had worked 11 years for a company where I had been steadily promoted.

I had had two kids through this companies health insurance for basically nothing. My savings there had helped pay for grad school.

This conversation with my father was a catharsis for me. Through it I came to understand that just because he said it didn’t make it so. I had been very much tied emotionally to his opinion of me.

To be fair to Dad, my opinion of him was also flawed over the years. It has taken me a lifetime of hard knocks to comprehend that in many ways he was a good man. For example, Dad helped me with expenses as I pursued my graduate degree.

It is not surprising that a show like the Twilight Zone presents stories filled with weird twists and ambiguity. After all, it was supposed to be science fiction.

Sadly, today’s “truth” is stranger than fiction at times. We see it not only in the news media, but in our personal lives. Individuals, for example, are now being called racist if they hold a view that history is worth saving. It is helpful if you become a target of such an accusation to state “just because they say it is so does not make it so.”

Theodore Sturgeon, a science fiction author, coined his own law in the 1950s which states that “ninety percent of everything is crud.” He developed a precursor to this adage which says that “nothing is always absolutely so.”

Much of what we absorb today is like Liz Powell’s nightmare. It is crap.

Yet, we may be able to receive a warning through our encounter with the crud. Liz did.

(Spoiler alert)

At the end of “Room 22″ Liz is shown boarding a plane to Miami after having been released from the hospital. The flight number is 22.

As she enters the airplane, she is greeted by a flight attendant who looks exactly like the nurse in her dream. The woman says to Liz,”Room for one more, honey.”

As in her dream, Liz scurries away, but this time back to the terminal. She watches as the plane she was to be on explodes on takeoff.

It’s important in the midst of our cultural decline into the Twilight Zone that we seek to learn what we can from the light we do have. It could save our lives. More on this in the next post.

Bartlett Finchley, a snobby food writer depicted in an episode of the old “Twilight Zone” television series, is experiencing his own “deus ex machina” (literally “god from the machine”). Finchley’s machines are not doing what they are supposed to do, which is to make his life easier and solve his problems. The technology surrounding him in his upper crust home is rebelling. Supposedly lifeless inventions have a mind of their own.

In this episode, called “A Thing About Machines”, Finchley’s television (via a female Latin dancer on its screen), his typewriter, his landline telephone, and his radio, all modern technology in the 1960s world of Rod Serling’s magnificent science fiction and fantasy series, are all telling him the same thing: “Get out of here, Finchley.”

The curmudgeonly author, described by Serling as a reclusive malcontent, responds by busting up his appliances. Finchley throws a chair into the television screen, tosses his radio down the stairs and rips his telephone out of the wall, all to no avail. The machines keep sounding off.

Some of his devices use more non-verbal behavior to get their point across. Finchley’s electric razor menaces him with its rotary blades, and even chases him down the stairs. Eventually he is killed when his own car goes after him on the street and pushes him into a swimming pool, where he is so frightened that he puts up no fight and drowns.

The theme of technology turning against us has been a common theme in the last several decades. Movies such as “Star Wars” and “I, Robot” and other technophobic flicks abound. Serling’s Twilight Zone episode with Finchley, called “A Thing About Machines:” is brilliant in that it foreshadows this trend.

Most modern humans aren’t about to become Luddites, the 19th century folks who were so anti-technology that they did things like bust up factories. These films have had little effect on us as we march ever onward in our development and use of our conveniences. We seem to be more and more tied to our mechanical and electronic contrivances.

Not everyone is a technofreak. There are indeed neo-Luddites out there, but they are on the fringe of society. Most seem to be fed-up academics, students environmentalists and religious folks. However, they don’t appear to be organized and thus don’t show up in the media.

My critique of technology’s effect on our culture is not novel. It’s no secret that there is a love-hate relationship between humans and their inventions today. On the one hand, older generations believe that our young people are becoming listless, addicted automatons who lack critical thinking skills due to their overuse of mobile phones and laptops. On the other hand, these doohickeys have become such a fact of life and seeming necessity that none of us, including those who are aging, can seem to function without them.

This leaves all of us in a quandary. What do we do about protecting ourselves from the ever encroaching storm of electronics, software and overbearing machines?

In a free society, the answer to that question is not black and white. Like with many things in a democratic culture, we are left to decide those things for ourselves. That it is the beauty of our form of government. However, given that we are already overwhelmed with choices in our society, it’s not a nice thing to have another decision put on our plate. But I think we have reached a point in our culture where we have to begin making individual informed decisions on what to do about the impact of technology upon us.

This week I made a decision of this ilk. For the umpteenth time, I ditched Facebook.

Like my previous attempts at running from Mark Zuckerberg’s creation, this choice was somewhat of a knee jerk reaction. But I think the call I made this time is more informed. My will was educated by both my intellect and emotions.

My brain has been mulling over the Facebook issue for some time. I have come to realize several facts. Most of my couple hundred or so “friends” aren’t really my pals My friends list is made up of people with whom I was in a relationship with at one time, but no more. In a normal life, friends enter and exit. This is not true of Facebook. I have culled my list over time, but this method of trying to make some semblance of reality has not worked for me.

What is worse is that I have added people I don’t even know. As a result, when I log on to this social media behemoth, I am now subjected to the opinions, interests, friend and family life of people I don’t really care about.

I have also joined or followed various interest groups, meme producers, joke sites and news outlets. I’m don’t think I am alone in this, as the New York Times recently reported that about half of my countrymen use Facebook as a news source. But I also have my own set of other sites where I get entertained and informed.

In essence, I am now officially overwhelmed when I go onto Facebook.

Then there is the issue of how I feel while I am on the site, or after I leave it. This concern is not new. I am familiar with a study which revealed that people are depressed while they are scrolling through Facebook. One reason is that we compare. Let’s be honest. No one posts their dirty laundry on social media. (Well, a few people do, but it’s a bit unseemly.) It’s all peace, love, dove all the time. If you currently have little or no life, or even if you do, it doesn’t make you feel good when you see the pics of your “friends” in exotic locales or hugging their latest love interest as if they were on the old “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” program.

At the moment though, I don’t think depression is exactly what I experience when I am am on Facebook. Of late I have have felt more like Finchley did with his rebelling machines. I become agitated, angry and perhaps even fearful.

Thankfully, I have figured out why I feel the way I do. For many, social media has become a place where they can express their political views for all to read, if these folks choose to, or even if they don’t. Some of their opinions are put forth in the form of banner-sized pithy quotes and memes, all taken out of context of course.

As a news and commentary junkie, I find that I can’t help myself when it comes to getting involved in these posts.. I “must” read and even comment. This has bred even more negativity in my life. My fellow social media types comment back, and many come at you with uninformed, knee jerk and personal attacks. And I don’t even really know these people. Facebook for me has become an interactive microcosm of our media environment as a whole: extremely toxic.

Because I am such a media freak and due to my current life circumstances, I find myself on Facebook a lot. Add this poisoning to my already insane addiction to the news, and I get the feeling I am on my way to a slow death. One of these days, like Finchley, I am going to find myself in a deep pool, pushed there by the force of the computer machine. It is time to regain control of my life and spiritual, mental and physical health.

I think the trigger for my decision to relinquish Facebook was a message I received from a blogger whose work I follow there. I tend to comment a lot on his site. I think this is mainly because I agree with him for the most part. We share a lot of the same political and religious views.

What he said to me was, “Dial it back.” He was cordial about it, but I realized I had become like the dominating student in one of my language classes who wouldn’t let the others get a word in edgewise. He meant well, but to he honest, it just added another negative emotion experienced on Facebook: embarrassment.

I had already determined that I was going to back off of media, and Facebook in particular. This man’s request just sealed the deal. He and my own thinking were telling me,”Get out of here, Fowler.”

I have been away from Facebook for a few days now, and I have to admit it has left a void. The way I feel now makes me wonder if I had become a Facebook addict. Perhaps.

I now realize I have to “face” outward into the real world, not the computer screen. I heeded the call and I got out of there. I am now in the very beginning of a process to decide where to go. I am hoping I will eventually hear and respond to a voice that says”come hither” and it will lead me into a more enjoyable lifestyle.